


Vanilla Twilight

by CorkyWrites (courtrocks96)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Character's Name Spelled as Hanji, Character's Name Spelled as Jaeger, Flashbacks, How Do I Tag, M/M, Nobody Dies, Reincarnation AU, Slow Build, happy childhoold, maybe smut later but not sure, might have some angst later on, not yeager, title from Vanilla Twilight by Owl City
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:10:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6101314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courtrocks96/pseuds/CorkyWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a child, Eren starts to have strange dreams about man eating monsters and people who fly through the air fighting them. Come to find out, they're not dreams, they are memories.</p><p>The older Eren gets, the more people he finds. First Armin, then Mikasa, then most of his comrades from the 104th trainees squad. He's happy to be with his family and friends and getting a second chance at life with the people who matter most to him.</p><p>But through all this, Eren feels like he's missing something, or rather, someone. He just can't remember who.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanilla Twilight

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm Corky or Court, whatever you feel like calling me. Back when I was like 12, I wrote a few fanfictions over at good ol' fanfiction.net but they were really bad and I totally forgot about them. Fast forward about 8 years and I'm back to writing fanfiction. This is my first AoT fic and definitely my first Ereri fic. I wanna apologize in advance for any grammar errors or anything that doesn't really make sense. I'm writing this for me, because I love reincarnation au fics, and if you like it, than I'm really happy! If you don't, then that's okay. It's not everyone's cup of tea.
> 
> I don't really know where I'm going with this fic, I only have a vague idea. But anyways, here we go : )

The memories started when I was 5 years old.

My dad, mom, and I were at the park having a family picnic. It was sunny and I remember that I was standing on the top of the slide when it happened. I looked down at the bottom to see my mom standing there, a happy smile on her face motioning for me to come down the slide, saying that she would catch me at the bottom. A grin spread across my face and I slid down into her waiting arms. I looked up at her and her eyes closed as she laughed and congratulated me. A second later, I was no longer in the park and instead of her smiling face, I saw her being lifted into the air by a monster, her arms outstretched towards me, screaming at me to run. 

And then I saw her get eaten.

I was screaming and crying before I really even knew what was going on. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, what I was seeing. Arms wound around me but I could barely feel them. I just kept screaming and clawing at the arms taking me away from my mom.

My parents somehow managed to calm me down after that, although I have no recollection of the rest of that day, my parents said I eventually just passed out and hoped that it was a one time, freak incident. But the dreams didn’t stop there. 

For the next few years, I would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying, seeking reassurances from my parents that they were still alive, that I was still alive.

I saw monsters, huge naked giants that smiled and ate people and in my dreams people that I loved died. They were filled with blood and gore, screams and crying. Eventually, the dreams came where I, too, was a monster. But there were good dreams too, dreams of friends, of comrades. Of training and laughing as we sat around a fire, joking and messing with each other. Those were the dreams that I liked.

No matter the fact that I had good dreams too, my parents were concerned for me. They started taking me to therapy at the age of 7, trying to figure out where my nightmares were coming from. The therapists couldn’t help, the only explanation they could come up with was that I had a way overactive imagination or must have seen something at some point that caused my childhood defense mechanisms to kick in or something like that. Thankfully, my parents never put me on any medication and as far as I know, never assumed that I was a nutcase and after a year, they finally decided to stop taking me to see therapists, seeing as how it wasn’t really helping matters much. It wasn’t long after that that my dad decided it would probably be best for us to move to a new town, to start over. I was okay with it, I didn’t have many friends at the school I was at, and so I looked forward to the move. 

I remember my mom telling me that there was a little boy who lived in the house next door to us and that instantly excited me. Mom made me sit on the porch while she, dad, and the movers brought all our furniture into the house. I was coloring pictures, the ones I saw in my head, when I heard a voice call my name that I had thought only existed in my dreams. 

My head whipped up and my eyes met big, watery, bright blue ones. His face was smiling and happy, his hair pulled out of his eyes by a blue hairband and there were tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Eren!” I stood up and ran as fast as I could towards the boy and when I reached him, we threw our arms around each other.

And that’s how I met Armin Arlert for the second time. Armin and I talked and we both came to realize that we had similar dreams and that they were not just dreams, they were memories. 

We became nearly inseparable after that, spending the night at each other’s houses, playing together during the day, studying (at Armin’s insistence) in school. With Armin’s help, I learned to control my reactions to the memories when they randomly happened. If one occurred in school, I managed to always get my teachers to let me use the bathroom or go to the nurse so I could handle them properly without having what I later learned was a panic attack. 

Even though Armin and I were happy that we had found each other, we both knew that we were missing Mikasa. We spent nights searching the internet for her, but we were only 11 at the time and could only do so much. Every search we went on for her came up empty. 

However, one day over Christmas break, Armin’s grandpa had taken the two of us to the mall to go shopping for each of our parents. We were exploring a department store, in the jewelry section looking at necklaces for our moms, when I heard Armin gasp and his arms clutched mine.

“Eren, look!” I remember him saying and I turned to see what he was looking at and I saw Mikasa standing there, a few isles over, bent over looking at some scarves. Her parents were standing next to her, talking about something.

“Mikasa!” I yelled in happy relief. Her head shot up and when her eyes spotted Armin and I, a smile that was rarely seen 2000 years ago spread across her face. The three of us flung into action at the same time and we collided in the middle of the walkway in a mess of hugging limbs and happy tears. After getting Armin’s grandpa and Mikasa’s parents to let us eat lunch together, we found out that Mikasa lived a few neighborhoods away from us and went to a different school not far from where we were. 

Armin came up with a lie that we knew each other through an after school type program and the adults all agreed to let us exchange house numbers.

Throughout all of school, we hung out together after school, on the weekends, over breaks. Whenever we could all get together, we were together. 

After so many years thinking you were alone in something as scary as the dreams all three of us had, it was nice to have someone, especially two someones, who knew what it was like.

And the older we got, the more people we found. By the time we were seniors in high school, we had been reunited with most of the 104th trainees squad, who also remembered most of our past lives.

But there were still people we hadn’t found in this life yet. Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, Squad Leader Hanji, Commander Erwin. We hadn’t found any of them and at the time I knew we would never stop searching.

And it wasn’t just that, but when I was a senior in high school, I realized that I had been having dreams that I couldn’t quite remember, memories just out of my grasp. Dreams of a man with a black undercut and piercing silver eyes. And for the longest time, I couldn’t remember his name, just that the thought of him made me simultaneously both happy and overwhelmingly sad. Every time I thought of this strange man, I would feel as though there was a part of me missing. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.

I tried not to dwell too hard on this mystery man and focused on living the life I should have 2000 years ago. Happy and reunited with my friends and family.

When the time came, I graduated high school with my friends at my side. I took pictures with Armin and Mikasa (who had transferred to our high school when we were sophomores) and all the rest of the 104th.

Armin, Mikasa, and I all decided to get an apartment together, close to where they would be going to college. I opted out because I had no clue what I wanted out of this life, other than to be happy, to travel to see everything I didn’t get to see the last time, and to find the rest of the people who mattered to me. 

I didn’t think that that was asking for too much.

But sometimes, life doesn’t work out that way.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, that was the introduction! Like I said before, I really don't have a plan for this fic, but I'll try to update as often as I can! And the chapters will get longer, this was just a kind of general introduction since I was a little bit at a loss for how to start it.
> 
> If you feel up to it, let me know what you thought about it or if you found something grammatically wrong or something that didn't quite make sense. I'm open to suggestions as well : )
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you'll be back for the next installment!


End file.
